Posts Tagged ‘C-suite study’

IBM’s Institute of Business Value (IBV) recently completed a massive study based 12,000 interviews of executives of legacy c-suite companies. Not just CEO and CIO but COO, CFO, CMO, and more, including the CHO. The CHO is the Chief Happiness Officer. Not sure what a CHO actually does but if one had been around when DancingDinosaur was looking for a corporate job he might have stayed on the corporate track instead of pursuing the independent analyst/writer dream.

(unattributed IBM graphic)

IBV actually referred to the study as “Incumbents strike back.” The incumbents being the legacy businesses the c-suite members represent. In a previous c-suite IBV study two years ago, the respondents expressed concern about being overwhelmed and overrun by new upstart companies, the born-on-the-web newcomers. In many ways the execs at that time felt they were under attack.

Spurred by fear, the execs in many cases turned to a new strategy that takes advantage of what has always been their source of strength although they often lacked the ways and means to take advantage of that strength; the huge amounts of data they have gathered and stored, for decades in some cases. With new cognitive systems now able to extract and analyze this legacy data and combine it with new data, they could actually beat some of the upstarts. Finally, they could respond like nimble, agile operations, not the lumbering dinosaurs as they were often portrayed.

“Incumbents have become smarter about leveraging valuable data, honing their employees’ skills, and in some cases, acquired possible disruptors to compete in today’s digital age,” the study finds, according to CIO Magazine, which published excerpts from the study here. The report reveals 72 percent of surveyed CxOs claimed the next wave of disruptive innovation will be led by the incumbents who pose a significant competitive threat to new entrants and digital players. By comparison, the survey found only 22 percent of respondents believe smaller companies and start-ups are leading disruptive change. This presents a dramatic reversal from a similar but smaller IBV survey two years ago.

Making possible this reversal is not only growing awareness among c-level execs of the value of their organizations’ data and the need to use it to counter the upstarts, but new technologies, approaches like DevOps, easier-to-use dev tools, the increasing adoption of Linux, and mainframes like the z13, z14, and LinuxONE, which have been optimized for hybrid and cloud computing. Also driving this is the emergence of platform options as a business strategy.

The platform option may be the most interesting decision right now. To paraphrase Hamlet, to be (a platform for your industry) or not to be. That indeed is a question many legacy businesses will need to confront. When you look at platform business models, what is right for your organization. Will you create a platform for your industry or piggyback on another company’s platform? To decide you need to first understand the dynamics of building and operating a platform.

The IBV survey team explored that question and found the respondents pretty evenly divided with 54% reporting they won’t while the rest expect to build and operate a platform. This is not a question that you can ruminate over endlessly like Hamlet. The advantage goes to those who can get there first in their industry segment. Noted IBV, only a few will survive in any one industry segment. It may come down to how finely you can segment the market for your platform and still maintain a distinct advantage. As CIO reported, the IBV survey found 57 percent of disruptive organizations are adopting a platform business model.

Also rising in importance is the people-talent-skills issue. C-level execs have always given lip service to the importance of people as in the cliché people are our greatest asset. Based on the latest survey, it turns out skills are necessary but not sufficient. Skills must be accompanied by the right culture. As the survey found: Companies that have the right culture in place are more successful. In that case, the skills are just an added adrenalin shot. Still the execs put people skills in top three. The IBV analysts conclude: People and talent is coming back. Guess we’re not all going to be replaced soon with AI or cognitive computing, at least not yet.

DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst, writer, and ghost-writer. Follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog. See more of his work at technologywriter.com and here.

About DancingDinosaur author

Alan Radding, the author of DancingDinosaur, is a 20-year IT industry analyst and journalist covering mainframe, midrange, PC, web, and cloud computing. Feel welcome to check out his website -- http://www.technologywriter.com.